In the New York Times, Arthur C. Brooks excerpts a recent conversation with a Hindu swami named Gnanmunidas, a man who has renounced all of his worldly possessions besides some basic clothing and prayer beads, and who is forbidden to physically touch money.

Said monk is also a graduate of the University of Texas who holds an MBA — but that's before he traveled to a Hindu seminary in India and emerged with fewer than a dozen possessions to his name.

Brooks asked Gnanmunidas if economic prosperity was a good or bad thing.

In Brooks' words, here's what the monk said:

"It's good," he replied. "It has saved millions of people in my country from starvation."

This was not what I expected. "But you own almost nothing," I pressed. "I was sure you'd say that money is corrupting." He laughed at my naïveté. "There is nothing wrong with money, dude. The problem in life is attachment to money." The formula for a good life, he explained, is simple: abundance without attachment.

The idea of "abundance without attachment" is one that resonates when you consider that even the richest among us aren't markedly happier, or that it may be in human nature to regret even the biggest, theoretically most exciting purchases.

Having a lot of money isn't the problem, according to Gnanmunidas. It's being desperately unwilling to have less that causes problems.

Brooks continues:

In Tibetan, the word "attachment" is translated as "do chag," which literally means "sticky desire." It signifies a desperate grasping at something, motivated by fear of separation from the object. One can find such attachment in many dysfunctional corners of life, from jealous relationships to paranoia about reputation and professional standing.

In the realm of material things, attachment results in envy and avarice. Getting beyond these snares is critical to life satisfaction.

Easier said than done. But if you're going to take a stab at it, Brooks suggests three tactics: First, spending the money you have on experiences rather than things, as the happiness of memories tends to outlive the joys of a new car; "steering clear of excessive usefulness," meaning doing things for their own sake rather than turning tasks into chores; and finally, prioritizing the most meaningful things in your life — in Brooks' example, faith — over fleeting possessions and status.

Apparently, having money is a good thing — as long as we're willing to let it go.

The above article is derived from this NYT article.. Do give it a read.

Quote:

Abundance Without Attachment

CHRISTMAS is at our throats again.”

That was the cheery yuletide greeting favored by the late English playwright Noël Coward, commemorating the holiday after which he was named. Less contrarian were the words of President Calvin Coolidge: “Christmas is not a time nor a season, but a state of mind. To cherish peace and good will, to be plenteous in mercy, is to have the real spirit of Christmas.”

Which quotation strikes a chord with you? Are you a Coward or a Coolidge?

If you sympathize more with Coward, welcome to the club. There are many more of us out there than one might expect. A 2005 survey by the Pew Research Center found that more than half of Americans were bothered “some” or “a lot” by the commercialization of Christmas. A 2013 follow-up confirmed that materialism is Americans’ least favorite part of the season.

Call it the Christmas Conundrum. We are supposed to revel in gift-giving and generosity, yet the season’s lavishness and commercialization leave many people cold. The underlying contradiction runs throughout modern life. On one hand, we naturally seek and rejoice in prosperity. On the other hand, success in this endeavor is often marred by a materialism we find repellent and alienating.

On a recent trip to India, I found an opportunity to help sort out this contradiction. I sought guidance from a penniless Hindu swami named Gnanmunidas at the Swaminarayan Akshardham Hindu temple in New Delhi. We had never met before, but he came highly recommended by friends. If Yelp reviewed monks, he would have had five stars.

To my astonishment, Gnanmunidas greeted me with an avuncular, “How ya doin’?” He referred to me as “dude.” And what was that accent — Texas? Sure enough, he had grown up in Houston, the son of Indian petroleum engineers, and had graduated from the University of Texas. Later, he got an M.B.A., and quickly made a lot of money.

But then Gnanmunidas had his awakening. At 26, he asked himself, “Is this all there is?” His grappling with that question led him to India, where he renounced everything and entered a Hindu seminary. Six years later, he emerged a monk. From that moment on, the sum total of his worldly possessions has been two robes, prayer beads and a wooden bowl. He is prohibited from even touching money — a discipline that would obviously be impossible for those of us enmeshed in ordinary economic life.

As an economist, I was more than a little afraid to hear what this capitalist-turned-renunciant had to teach me. But I posed a query nonetheless: “Swami, is economic prosperity a good or bad thing?” I held my breath and waited for his answer.

“It’s good,” he replied. “It has saved millions of people in my country from starvation.”

This was not what I expected. “But you own almost nothing,” I pressed. “I was sure you’d say that money is corrupting.” He laughed at my naïveté. “There is nothing wrong with money, dude. The problem in life is attachment to money.” The formula for a good life, he explained, is simple: abundance without attachment.

The assertion that there is nothing wrong with abundance per se is entirely consistent with most mainstream philosophies. Even traditions commonly perceived as ascetic rarely condemn prosperity on its face. The Dalai Lama, for example, teaches that material goods themselves are not the problem. The real issue, he writes, is our delusion that “satisfaction can arise from gratifying the senses alone.”

Moreover, any moral system that takes poverty relief seriously has to celebrate the ahistoric economic bounty that has been harvested these past few centuries. The proportion of the world living on $1 per day or less has shrunk by 80 percent in our lifetimes. Today, Bill Gates can credibly predict that almost no countries will be conventionally “poor” by 2035.

In other words, if we are lucky enough to achieve abundance, we should be thankful for it and work to share the means to create it with others around the world. The real trick is the second part of the formula: avoiding attachment.

In Tibetan, the word “attachment” is translated as “do chag,” which literally means “sticky desire.” It signifies a desperate grasping at something, motivated by fear of separation from the object. One can find such attachment in many dysfunctional corners of life, from jealous relationships to paranoia about reputation and professional standing.

In the realm of material things, attachment results in envy and avarice. Getting beyond these snares is critical to life satisfaction. But how to do it? Three practices can help.

First, collect experiences, not things.

Material things appear to be permanent, while experiences seem evanescent and likely to be forgotten. Should you take a second honeymoon with your spouse, or get a new couch? The week away sounds great, but hey — the couch is something you’ll have forever, right?

Wrong. Thirty years from now, when you are sitting in rocking chairs on the porch, you’ll remember your second honeymoon in great detail. But are you likely to say to one another, “Remember that awesome couch?” Of course not. It will be gone and forgotten. Though it seems counterintuitive, it is physically permanent stuff that evaporates from our minds. It is memories in the ether of our consciousness that last a lifetime, there for us to enjoy again and again.

This “paradox of things” has been thoroughly documented by researchers. In 2003, psychologists from the University of Colorado and Cornell studied how Americans remembered different kinds of purchases — material things and experiences — they have made in the past. Using both a national survey and a controlled experiment with human subjects, they found that reflecting on experiential purchases left their subjects significantly happier than did remembering the material acquisitions.

I learned this lesson once and for all from my son Carlos. Five years ago, when Carlos was 9 years old, he announced that all he wanted for Christmas was a fishing trip — just the two of us, alone. No toys; no new things — just the trip. So we went fishing, and have done so every year since. Any material thing I had bought him would have been long forgotten. Yet both of us can tell you every place we’ve gone together, and all the fish we’ve caught, every single year.

Second, steer clear of excessive usefulness.

Our daily lives often consist of a dogged pursuit of practicality and usefulness at all costs. This is a sure path toward the attachment we need to avoid. Aristotle makes this point in his Nicomachean Ethics; he shows admiration for learned men because “they knew things that are remarkable, admirable, difficult, and divine, but useless.”

Countless studies show that doing things for their own sake — as opposed to things that are merely a means to achieve something else — makes for mindfulness and joy.

In one famous experiment, college students were given puzzles to solve. Some of the students were paid, and others were not. The unpaid participants tended to continue to work on the puzzles after the experiment was finished, whereas the paid participants abandoned the task as soon as the session was over. And the paid subjects reported enjoying the whole experience less.

FOR those living paycheck to paycheck, a focus on money is understandable. But for those of us blessed to be above poverty, attachment to money is a means-ends confusion. Excessive focus on your finances obscures what you are supposed to enjoy with them. It’s as if your experience of the holidays never extended beyond the time spent at the airport on the way to see family. (If you’re thinking that’s actually the best part, then you have a different problem.)

This manifestly does not mean we should abandon productive impulses. On the contrary, it means we need to treat our industry as an intrinsic end. This is the point made famously in the Hindu text the Bhagavad Gita, where work is sanctified as inherently valuable, not as a path to a payoff.

And finally, get to the center of the wheel.

In the rose windows of many medieval churches, one finds the famous “wheel of fortune,” or rota fortunae. The concept is borrowed from ancient Romans’ worship of the pagan goddess Fortuna. Following the wheel’s rim around, one sees the cycle of victory and defeat that everyone experiences throughout the struggles of life. At the top of the circle is a king; at the bottom, the same man as a pauper.

Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales” uses the idea to tell of important people brought low throughout history: “And thus does Fortune’s wheel turn treacherously. And out of happiness bring men to sorrow.”

The lesson went beyond the rich and famous. Everyone was supposed to remember that each of us is turning on the wheel. One day, we’re at the top of our game. But from time to time, we find ourselves laid low in health, wealth and reputation.

If the lesson ended there, it would be pretty depressing. Every victory seems an exercise in futility, because soon enough we will be back at the bottom. But as the Catholic theologian Robert Barron writes, the early church answered this existential puzzle by placing Jesus at the center of the wheel. Worldly things occupy the wheel’s rim. These objects of attachment spin ceaselessly and mercilessly. Fixed at the center was the focal point of faith, the lodestar for transcending health, wealth, power, pleasure and fame — for moving beyond mortal abundance. The least practical thing in life was thus the most important and enduring.

But even if you are not religious, there is an important lesson for us embedded in this ancient theology. Namely, woe be unto those who live and die by the slings and arrows of worldly attachment. To prioritize these things is to cling to the rim, a sure recipe for existential vertigo. Instead, make sure you know what is the transcendental truth at the center of your wheel, and make that your focus.

So here is my central claim: The frustration and emptiness so many people feel at this time of year is not an objection to the abundance per se, nor should it be. It is a healthy hunger for nonattachment. This season, don’t rail against the crowds of shoppers on Fifth Avenue or become some sort of anti-gift misanthrope. Celebrate the bounty that has pulled millions out of poverty worldwide. But then, ponder the three practices above. Move beyond attachment by collecting experiences, avoid excessive usefulness, and get to the center of your wheel. It might just turn out to be a happy holiday after all.

I never finished my story about Swami Gnanmunidas. Before I left him that day in Delhi, we had a light lunch of soup and naan. I told him I would be writing about our conversation; many Americans would be hearing his name. He contemplated this for a moment and, modeling nonattachment, responded simply.

“Dude, do you like the soup? It’s spicy.”

Arthur C. Brooks is a contributing opinion writer who is the president of the American Enterprise Institute.

I thought it was a load of bs. If you don't have a moh for money then how will you get mo' money If you don't have mo' money then how are you going to keep up with the Joneses? how are you going to buy that nice 65" LG OLED TV You strive and you thrive

Phatichars like these are dime a dozen... bet you, none of them have a nice surround sound system in their homes... if they indeed have a home

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"Hinduism brought a multitude of religions under one roof and survived for eons. Christianity and other religions will need to do the same or perish." - saneless

I thought it was a load of bs. If you don't have a moh for money then how will you get mo' money If you don't have mo' money then how are you going to keep up with the Joneses? how are you going to buy that nice 65" LG OLED TV You strive and you thrive

Phatichars like these are dime a dozen... bet you, none of them have a nice surround sound system in their homes... if they indeed have a home

Arey kam-dimaagi banda, what tf is the use of wealth if you load up your bed and sleep on it? How tf is the economy going to grow if you forsake all attachment from money And if economy is down in the dumps then how is it going to save millions of people in his country from starvation The guy seems to be completely disillusioned and confused... probably doesn't even know where to eat from and where to talk from

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"Hinduism brought a multitude of religions under one roof and survived for eons. Christianity and other religions will need to do the same or perish." - saneless

Arey kam-dimaagi banda, what tf is the use of wealth if you load up your bed and sleep on it? How tf is the economy going to grow if you forsake all attachment from money And if economy is down in the dumps then how is it going to save millions of people in his country from starvation The guy seems to be completely disillusioned and confused... probably doesn't even know where to eat from and where to talk from

YOur Spiritual level is very low .

This is what a Krishna conscious soul will tell you if you ramble some common sense .

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If you win you need not explain.. But if you lose you should not be there to explain

The take of balanced /confused Libran me is that the Headline is good and appealing and a couple of statements do make sense. But the whole article is too long and confusing.

Now, 'Sab dekha hai' me says that this guy is basically reinventing himself as the spiritual cum management guru and could be next Deepak Chopra. He found his first bakra in the Author, but needs to find someone who can convey his ideas better.

also, reminded me of a talk by CK Prahlad on his ' Bottom of the pyramid' concept where he told that profit is good but greed and charity both are bad.

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This is quite a game, politics. There are no permanent enemies, and no permanent friends,only permanent interests. - Some Firang